I was wrong.
Previously, I argued that Iran had three potential futures: Pakistan, Syria, or North Korea. But as events unfold, I think a more accurate mirror is not any of those.
It is Lebanon.
To understand why, we need to go back to the late 1960s.
Before 1967, Syria used the Golan Heights to shell northern Israel and support cross-border militant activity. During the Six-Day War, Israel captured the Golan Heights, removing that high-ground threat.
Separately, the Palestine Liberation Organization or the PLO, led by Yasser Arafat, was expelled from Jordan after Black September events of 1970-71. It relocated to Lebanon and established what was effectively a state within a state, using southern Lebanon as a base for attacks into Israel.
This exacerbated tensions inside Lebanon’s already fragile sectarian system and contributed to the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975.
Then came 1979.
The Iranian Revolution introduced a new force into the region. Iran supported the formation of Hezbollah, which emerged as both a resistance movement against Israel and a vehicle for projecting Iranian influence, under the cover of protecting the Shi’a population of Lebanon.
By 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, primarily to eliminate the PLO presence.
As the PLO later moved toward political engagement with Israel, Hezbollah became the primary banner of armed resistance - backed by Iranian funding, training, and strategic direction - and grew into the most powerful non-state armed group in the world.
On the other side, Ehud Barak campaigned on ending Israel’s presence in Lebanon. The original justification for the occupation - the PLO threat - had diminished, while Hezbollah made the occupation increasingly costly through sustained attacks.
In 2000, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon, expecting the Lebanese state to reassert sovereignty in the south in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425.
That did not happen.
Instead, Hezbollah filled the vacuum. It entrenched itself militarily and politically, creating a persistent, Iran-backed armed force operating within Lebanese territory but outside full state control.
This is the key dynamic:
A weak state allowed a parallel armed structure to emerge, backed externally, and immune to internal accountability.
From that point on, Israel’s strategy became what it calls “mowing the lawn”: periodic operations to degrade Hezbollah’s capabilities without fundamentally resolving the underlying structure. This is not a new pattern.
Why This Matters for Iran
Now let’s come back to today.
If Iran’s central state weakens under sustained external pressure, the likely outcome is not total collapse (Syria), nuclear isolation (North Korea), or controlled militarization (Pakistan).
It is fragmentation of authority.
The most organized and ideologically committed actor inside that fragmentation is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the IRGC is Militarily capable, ideologically driven, institutionally embedded and insulated from civilian control.
In today’s Iran, the IRGC is the dominant power of the state. That’s why you do not hear anything from Artesh, the National Army of Iran.
That creates a Lebanon-like equilibrium:
a powerful internal armed actor continuous external tension periodic military interventions by regional powers
In that scenario, Iran does not become a battlefield once. It becomes a permanent condition.
The Strategic Consequence
This is not a new model. Israel already understands it as for over two decades, it has operated under the assumption that Lebanon cannot control Hezbollah; and has acted accordingly.
Not to solve the problem, but to manage it, contain it and to keep it below a certain threshold.
That is what “mowing the lawn” really is: an acceptance that the structure will persist.
Now extend that logic to Iran.
For Israel, this is no longer a theoretical risk. It is a familiar pattern at a much larger scale. And for the Arab Gulf states, the stakes are even higher - and their alignment with Israel is no longer ambiguous.
Their economies depend on stability - on trade routes, on energy infrastructure, on predictability. An Iran that behaves like Lebanon, but with far greater scale, reach, and resources, is not just a threat. It is a constant pressure on their entire economic model. Which means they, too, are pulled into the same logic:
Containment, intervention, and management of instability.
Not once, but repeatedly.
The Internal Question
This leads to the uncomfortable conclusion.
The argument over who started the war; whether it was the US, Israel, or the Islamic regime is strategically secondary.
What matters is the structure that now exists.
The Iranian people did not choose this confrontation, but they are living inside its consequences. And instead of confronting the structure, we are consumed by reactions to it.
Arguments. Positions. Sides.
For or against the war. For or against this actor or that actor.
Endless, emotional, circular debates.
We argue with each other as if our opinions will change the trajectory of a system that does not even register them.
We fight over narratives while the structure that produces the outcome remains untouched.
And then we call that engagement. We call it awareness. We call it taking a stand.
It isn’t.
The Real Choice
Lebanon is not just a historical case. It is a warning.
There is a limit to what people can do under a system like this. Iran does not have a democratic mechanism through which the population can express consent or opposition to war.
This war is not the result of a single decision. It is not a conspiracy.
It is the result of a structural fracture in how the region has operated for decades.
So what can we do?
Very little, immediately.
But that does not excuse us from understanding the history of our region and the structure we are living inside.
Because without that understanding, we default to the easiest possible behavior:
We argue. We react. We divide ourselves into camps.
And we mistake that for agency.
It isn’t.
It is emotional consumption of a reality we are not shaping.
And in doing so, we waste the only thing that might matter if a real opportunity ever appears:
Clarity.
If there is ever a moment; however small; where people can influence the direction of the country, that moment will not reward outrage or alignment.
It will require understanding and it will require precision.
It will require people who are not distracted by the noise of their own arguments.
Lebanon shows what happens when that moment never comes, or when it comes, and no one is ready for it.
And what follows is not resolution.
Not victory. Not even collapse.
It is something much worse.
It is decades.